The total nominal value of liquidations in the cryptocurrency market in 2025 approached $150 billion. Investors lost an average of about $500 million daily, according to a report by CoinGlass.
According to analysts, on most trading days, forced position closures amounted to tens or hundreds of millions of dollars and did not impact asset prices.
Systemic stress was targeted and concentrated in a few brief but acute crises. A key event was the significant deleveraging on October 10-11.
“Black” Saturday
The total volume of liquidations for the day exceeded $19 billion, setting an all-time record. Considering reporting delays and data from market makers, the actual amount could have reached $30 billion to $40 billion. Up to 90% of closures were long positions.
The trigger for the event was a macroeconomic shock when U.S. President Donald Trump announced 100% tariffs on imports from China.
CoinGlass also noted the market’s internal vulnerability as a catalyst. By then, Bitcoin, overheated by expectations of loose monetary policy, had reached a historic high of around $126,000.
The derivatives sector was saturated with long leverage and a high spread between futures and spot prices.
The market’s architecture exacerbated the situation. The enormous aggregate leverage, abundance of illiquid assets, and complex institutional hedging strategies made the system reliant on the flawless operation of liquidation mechanisms and ADL.
Under extreme stress, these mechanisms failed, leading to a cascading hedge failure and a chain reaction of liquidations. This was compounded by infrastructural issues: CEX faced withdrawal delays, API disruptions, and even brief outages of order matching mechanisms.
“Unlike the Terra era in 2022, this event did not trigger major default chains among institutions. Although market makers like Wintermute suffered partial losses due to the ADL mechanism, their overall capital remained sufficient. Risks were concentrated within specific strategies and assets,” experts concluded.
Earlier, the co-founder of the ETH Strategy protocol, under the pseudonym Clouted, stated that after the October market crash, “something broke.” According to him, all liquidity has since left the sector, and demand has significantly dropped.